Comes with shorter warranty than some competing products. Does not support USB 3.0.

Bottom Line

The Western Digital My Passport Studio (1TB) is a capacious and speedy external hard drive for those who need quick, home studio?quality storage in a portable package, but don't want to wait for Thunderbolt drives to become affordable.

The Western Digital My Passport Studio (1TB) is a speedy, portable hard drive for the Mac power user. It comes with FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 interfaces, which give you maximum flexibility on a Mac desktop or MacBook Pro laptop. It offers nice dollar-per-gigabyte value, and at $179.99 (list) it's a heck of a lot less expensive than any of the few Thunderbolt drives on the market right now. If you're a Mac-using photographer or videographer, or you simply need to store a lot of data often, the My Passport Studio is a fine choice.

Design and Features
Though it may not initially look like it, the My Passport Studio is all aluminum. The majority of the drive enclosure is black anodized aluminum, with a ring of natural-colored metal on the periphery. It specifically matches the aluminum-and-black look of the latest MacBook laptops and Mac desktops. The enclosure is slightly curved where you would expect right angles, such as the corners and even along the edges. This contrasts with the Iomega Helium Portable Hard Drive (1TB) ($199.99 list, 3 stars), which looks and feels like a hard-edged aluminum brick; the My Passport Studio feels better in the hand thanks to these curves. The drive has model-identifying text and an embossed WD logo on its enclosure face, and you'll find the two daisy-chainable FireWire 800 ports and single micro USB port on the back panel. The current design precludes the use of a wider USB 3.0compatible connector along with the FireWire ports, plus there are no USB 3.0 ports on any currently shipping Mac anyway. That said, a USB 3.0 port would be nice for cross-platform use or possible future Macs.

The drive comes formatted for HFS+, the native Mac OS file system, so you can use it out of the box with Time Machine. If you don't want to use Time Machine the drive works perfectly well as a storage or transport drive, but the My Passport Studio doesn't come with any other backup software (which may be an issue if you're still using Mac OS X 10.4 or earlier). There's a drive image file on the My Passport Studio containing a drive health utility, which goes into more detail than the Disk Utility that's part of Mac OS X; a WD + Turbo utility that speeds some disk operations (we tested the drive without the Turbo utility); a WD Security app for hardware encryption; and the user manuals in several languages. The My Passport Studio comes with a two-year warranty, which is better than the standard one-year warranty for basic drives. Our current Editors' Choice portable hard drive, the Seagate GoFlex Ultra-portable Drive for Mac (1.5TB) ($219.99 list, 3.5 stars), also comes with a two-year warranty. Some more expensive drives, however, like the Iomega Helium, come with three-year warranties.

Performance
Its FireWire 800 port makes the My Passport Studio attractive to users of all currently shipping Macs aside from the MacBook Air, which lacks a FireWire port. Though FireWire 800 is slower than Thunderbolt, Apple and Intel's fastest interface, FireWire 800 is plenty fast for external storage. The My Passport Studio took only 31 seconds to transfer our 1.22GB test folder over FireWire 800 and 44 seconds over USB 2.0. The Iomega eGo BlackBelt Mac Edition ($199.99 list, 4 stars) was in the same ballpark, but still significantly faster (22 seconds over FireWire 800, 35 seconds over USB 2.0). But the roles were reversed when we tested throughput: The My Passport Studio achieved significantly higher scores on the AJA System test (69MBps read and 62MBps write over FireWire 800; 37MBps read and 29MBps write over USB 2.0) versus the eGo (46MBps read and 48MBps write over FireWire 800; 21MBps read and 20MBps write over USB 2.0). What this suggests is that the eGo is better for quick file transfers, but the My Passport Studio is a better work drive for graphics pros. The Iomega Helium's throughput scores were similar to those of the eGo when transferring over USB 2.0, and close to those of the My Passport Studio on the copy test.

In the end, the Western Digital My Passport Studio (1 TB) is an attractive drive for the price, coming in below what you'd pay for the Iomega Helium and eGo Blackbelt, with good throughput results that help seal the deal. The My Passport Studio substantiates its name choice by being the one you want if you're a professional photographer or videographer who is constantly out in the field. The My Passport Studio is less expensive, pretty, and ultimately faster for audio or video work than its rivals. It doesn't quite beat the Seagate GoFlex Ultra-portable Drive for Mac (1.5TB) on either a dollar-per-gigabyte or feature basis, but we nonetheless highly recommend it for Mac power users.

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Joel Santo Domingo is the Lead Analyst for the Desktops team at PC Magazine Labs. He joined PC Magazine in 2000, after 7 years of IT work for companies large and small. His background includes managing mobile, desktop and network infrastructure on both the Macintosh and Windows platforms. Joel is proof that you can escape the retail grind: he wore a yellow polo shirt early in his tech career. Along the way Joel earned a BA in English Literature and an MBA in Information Technology...
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